Thank you so much for doing this for the hard work. The English speaking fans really appreciate it. Would you consider subbing Chouriki Sentai Ohranger? It seems no has gotten past 5 episodes of that series.

Hi
(1) MASSIVE thanks for doing this guys and gals wanted this series for sooo long now glad to see it done and done so well

(2) Having a problem with episodes 1-10 they seem to be linked up wrong on the individiual links most seem to be there (in the wrong order) but I was downloading the avi versions and I’m missing 1,3,4,7,9 & 10

So here’s hoping all the links are correct, damn wordpress for using a different format for embedding links than what forums use. If there are any errors let me know and I’ll fix them asap, I mean if there aren’t any errors from copy/pasting 104 links a couple of times then I must be like a god or something, right? 😛

I really appreciate that you guys translated this show all the way through so those of us who don’t speak Japanese can finally watch it!

However, I can understand enough Japanese to know that liberties were taken with the translation. Not just the usual addition of “shit”s and “crap”s and other expletives that aren’t supposed to be there, but entire lines being completely different from what the characters are actually saying.

For example, I’m watching Episode 16, and Geki’s line “Nanda, kono aji wa?” (“What’s this flavor?”) was translated as “This taste is bizarre”, which doesn’t even sound like something Geki would say (he’s very positive and wouldn’t say something judgmental like that).

I’ve noticed a lot of examples like this. It makes me wonder how “different” the translations are for the lines that I don’t understand?

Although I have to say – even though I would have preferred literal translations of the riddles in the DoraSphinx episode, the translations were brilliant. I can’t imagine how much work it took to come up with actual riddles that made sense in English but still fit the drawings he was showing!

From Kou: My priority was in giving the characters distinct ways of speaking in English to match their distinct ways of speaking in Japanese. For instance, before I started the show, I had seen complaints that Dan and Boi come off as very similar characters to people watching it raw, but they actually have completely different speech patterns. So when I wrote Dan’s lines, I did it in a way so as to emphasize his blunter, more streetwise way of speaking in Japanese. Occasional mild cursing (but nothing inappropriate to the show’s target audience — I don’t recall having any character use the word “shit”, and if it made it in there somehow, it absolutely should be removed) was my way of reflecting that.

Above all I wanted to make sure that the humor and liveliness of Zyuranger’s dialogue was preserved in the subtitles, as were the nuances of the character interactions. Your example of Geki’s line, “what is this flavor?” is a good example. If you listen to Geki’s delivery of the line, you might be able to hear that while the sentence does use a question word (nanda), the word order and delivery shape it into more of an incredulous, accusatory statement.

While I agree with you that it seems a bit out of character like Geki to be so tactless, it also seemed to me that it was the intent of the episode’s writer to bend him a little that way. After all, if the team is not tactless with Boi, he has no reason to get angry and storm out; in addition, part of the humor of the situation is that Boi’s cooking is so bad it causes normally tactful team members to break out into tactlessness, and normally tactless members to become outright rude. If I had simply put “What is this flavor?” in the subtitles, I think a lot of viewers might have taken it at face value and assumed Geki was just asking an innocent question, which would make Boi’s anger at the whole team a little more inexplicable. (It’s also worth noting that the episode in question was not written by the show’s head writer, but by one of the show’s secondary writers, Takaku Susumu. Takaku is a long-time veteran of Sentai and mecha anime who was the head writer on the original Mazinger Z, and as such is no stranger to making his heroes a little tactless. )

Unfortunately, I recognize that this way of translating can cause a lot of cognative dissonance to people who are learning the language, and as I’ve moved on from Zyuranger my translation style has continued to evolve, searching for the best ways to balance the literal meaning of lines with the qualities of a show that I listed above. It’s an ongoing process for me, and as you continue with your
Japanese studies then I’m sure it will be that way for you too.

On the other hand, I’m really glad that you enjoyed the rendering of Dora Sphynx’s riddles. If you’re interested in the explanations of the original riddles for educational purposes, they should be available in commented-out lines if you open up the script in Aegisub or Notepad.